The Book of Paradise by Itzik Manger
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An irreverent take on how Power looks to the powerless, how memories of home persist in exile, and how impossible it is to fit into preexisting systems when you are not considered "one of us".
Samuel Abba is a former angel who has just been born as a human baby, but still has all his memories of his life in Paradise.
Samuel Abba's Paradise is full of adulterers, despotic patriarchs, rising tensions, unrequited love, despair, poverty, prejudice, class distinction, drunkenness, violence, theft, domestic abuse, and segregation. On Earth, he is told by human authority figures that this can't be true - these are Earthly problems.
This is a humorous book, but the message of how it feels to live in exile, seeing the eradication of your home and your culture, hits very hard.
